Lady Midnight
Page 55

She moved aside, gently breaking Julian’s hold on her. “We should get back to Mark and Cristina,” she murmured. “It’s been a while.”
She turned away from him, but not before she saw the expression on his face shut, a slamming door. She felt it like a hollow in her stomach, the intractable certainly that no matter how many demons she had killed that night, her nerve had failed her when she needed it most.
When they got back to the front of the restaurant, they found Mark and Cristina seated on top of a picnic table, surrounded by cardboard boxes of french fries, buttered rolls, fried clams, and fish tacos. Cristina was holding a bottle of lime soda and smiling at something Mark had said.
The wind off the ocean had dried Mark’s hair. It blew around his face, highlighting how much he looked like a faerie and how little he seemed like Nephilim.
“Mark was telling me about the fight at the convergence point,” said Cristina as Emma clambered onto the table and reached for a fry. Julian climbed up after her and snagged a soda.
Emma launched into her own version of events, from their discovery of the cave and the wallet to the appearance of the Mantid demons. “They crushed Mark’s motorcycle so we couldn’t get away,” she said.
Mark looked glum.
“Thy steed is no more, methinks,” Emma said to him. “Will they get you another one?”
“Unlikely,” said Mark. “The Fair Folk are not generous.”
Julian looked at Emma with his eyebrows raised. “Methinks?” he echoed.
“I can’t help it.” She shrugged. “It’s catching.”
Cristina held out a hand. “Let’s see what you found,” she said. “Since you sacrificed so much to get it.”
Emma pulled the square leather object from her pocket and let them all pass it around. Next she retrieved her phone and held it out while she flipped through the photos of the inside of the cave with the odd languages scrawled on the walls.
“We can translate the Greek and Latin,” said Emma. “But we’ll need to hit the library for the other languages.”
“Stanley Wells,” said Julian, looking through the half-burned wallet. “Name sounds familiar.”
“When we get back, Ty and Livvy can find out who he is,” Emma said. “And we can figure out his address, see if there’s anything to find at his house. See if there’s a reason he might have been targeted for sacrifice.”
“They could be randomly chosen,” said Julian.
“They are not,” said Mark.
They all paused, Julian with a bottle halfway to his mouth. “What?” Emma said.
“Not everyone makes a fit subject to be sacrificed for a summoning spell,” said Mark. “It cannot be completely random.”
“They teach you much about dark magic in the Wild Hunt?” Julian asked.
“The Wild Hunt is dark magic,” said Mark. “I recognized the circle in the cave.” He tapped Emma’s phone. “This is a sacrificial circle. This is necromancy. The power of death harnessed to some purpose.”
They were all quiet for a moment. The cold wind off the ocean ruffled Emma’s damp hair. “The Mantids were guards,” she said finally. “Whoever the necromancer is doesn’t want anyone finding the secret ceremonial chamber.”
“Because he needs it,” said Jules.
“It could be a she,” said Emma. “It isn’t just men who get to be psycho magic serial killers.”
“Granted,” said Julian. “Either way, there’s nowhere else near the city with a ley line convergence like this. Necromancy that was done at a ley line extension would probably show up on Magnus’s map—but what if it was done at a convergence?”
“Then it might well be hidden from the Nephilim,” said Mark. “The killer could be doing the ceremonial killings at the convergence point—”
“And then dumping the bodies at the ley line extensions?” finished Cristina. “But why? Why not leave them in the cave?”
“Perhaps they want the bodies to be found,” said Mark. “After all, the marks on them are writing. It could be a message. A message they want to communicate.”
“Then they should have written the message in a language we know,” Emma muttered.
“Maybe the message isn’t for us,” said Mark.
“The convergence will have to be watched,” said Cristina. “Someone will have to monitor it. There is no other convergence point; the murderer will have to come back at some point.”
“Agreed,” Julian said. “We’ll need to set up something at the convergence. Something that’ll warn us.”
“Tomorrow, during the day,” Emma said. “The Mantid demons ought to be inactive—”
Julian laughed. “You know what we have tomorrow? Testing,” he said. Twice a year Diana was required to test them on certain basics, from rune drawing to training to languages, and report back to the Clave on their progress.
There was a chorus of protest. Julian held his hands up. “I’ll text Diana about it,” he said. “But if we don’t do it, the Clave will get suspicious.”
Mark said something unprintable about what the Clave could do with its suspicions.
“I don’t think I know that word,” Cristina said, looking amused.
“I’m not sure I do either,” Emma said. “And I know a lot of bad words.”
Mark leaned back with the beginning of a smile, then sucked in his breath. He pulled his bloody shirt collar away from his neck and glanced down gingerly at his injured chest.
Julian set his bottle down. “Let me see.”
Mark let go of his collar. “There is nothing you can do. It will heal.”
“It’s a demon injury,” said Julian. “Let me see it.”
Mark looked at him, startled. The waves made a soft soughing sound around them. There was no one left outside the restaurant except them; the other tables had emptied. Mark hadn’t heard that voice of Julian’s before, Emma thought, the one that brooked no argument, the one that sounded like a grown man’s. The kind of man you listened to.
Mark lifted the front of his shirt. The cut ran jaggedly across his chest. It was no longer bleeding, but the sight of the ragged pale flesh made Emma grit her teeth.
“Let me—” Julian began.
Mark sprang off the table. “I am fine,” he said. “I do not need your healing magic. I do not need your runes of safety.” He touched his shoulder, where a black Mark bloomed like a butterfly: a permanent rune of protection. “I have had this since I was ten,” he said. “I had this when they took me, and this when they broke me and made me one of them. Never has it helped me. The runes of the Angel are lies cast into the teeth of Heaven.”
Hurt bloomed and faded in Julian’s eyes. “They’re not perfect,” he said. “Nothing is perfect. But they do help. I just don’t want to see you hurt.”
“Mark,” Cristina said in a soft voice. But Mark had gone somewhere else, somewhere where none of their voices could reach him. He stood with his eyes blazing, his hands opening and closing into fists.
Slowly, his hand came up, caught the hem of his shirt. Pulled it up and over his head. He shrugged the shirt off, dropping it to the sand. Emma saw pale skin, much paler than hers, a hard chest and a narrow waist cut with the fine lines of old scars. Then he turned around.